In celebration of September 26th, aka “The Last of Us Day” (the show/game’s fictional disease begins spreading on 9/26), HBO dropped the first trailer for The Last of Us Season 2, which will be returning in 2025. The teaser shows Joel and Ellie living on the commune in Jackson, Wyoming where they were headed at the end of last season, as Ellie seems to find love, and Joel finally gets a chance to play the guitar again. Then, unsurprisingly, a bunch of bad things involving fungal zombies happen. A cover of Pearl Jam’s “Future Days” softly plays, with shots of Ellie back in the outside world and Joel shedding tears.
For those out of the loop, HBO’s The Last Of Us is an adaptation of the popular PlayStation videogame series from Naughty Dog. It takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where a fungal pandemic turned much of humanity into zombie-like monsters, and the first season followed two survivors, Joel and Ellie, as they made their way across a devastated America.
Like the games, the TV series quickly gained steam, becoming HBO Max’s most streamed show and one of the most watched programs for the network since Game of Thrones. It stars Pedro Pascal as Joel and Bella Ramsey as Ellie. Craig Mazin, the creator of Chernobyl, and Neil Druckmann, the co-creator of The Last of Us videogame, will be returning as showrunners for the latest run.
This new season will be based on the second game in the franchise, The Last of Us Part II, and the show’s creators have already confirmed that this adaption is planned for multiple additional seasons. While The Last of Us Part II was critically acclaimed and sold over ten million copies, it ignited “controversy” in some sections of its fan base over certain storytelling decisions, resulting in harassment campaigns against voice actors who worked on the game and apparent review bombing. It will be interesting to see if TV audiences react similarly or if they instead behave like well-adjusted adults who don’t threaten people over a piece of fiction. Either way, we’ll find out when the series returns to HBO and Max next year.
You can watch the full trailer below:
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